


Vice Versa

by mostlyapples



Category: Team Fortress 2
Genre: Attempt at Humor, Gallows Humor, Gen, Medical Experimentation, Team Building, canon violence, gen - Freeform, literal talking heads, lots of hugs
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-04
Updated: 2014-08-04
Packaged: 2018-02-11 17:14:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2076336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mostlyapples/pseuds/mostlyapples
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An in-depth interpretation of "Meet the Sandvich" and "Meet the Medic." Never finished, as the elements of intrigue I had wanted to elaborate upon ended up being used in another story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The familiar sounds of fighting reached him even here, isolated as he was from the battlefield. He could hear screams of agony accompanying round after round of gunshots, the cacophony lovingly punctuated by occasional explosions, and now, the intruder alarms. But before long, it became clear that only a few of his teammates had survived to breach the enemy defenses, and the foolish, fragile hope he had been nursing ever since the battle started immediately deflated.  
  
Sighing, he mentally mapped out the enemy Heavy’s path into the interior of the base, that thunderous tread increasing in volume as it neared his location.  The bottles of Red Shed began to rattle on the rickety shelf, almost as if shaking in anticipation of the bloodbath soon to follow.  Though muffled by the walls imprisoning him, he could decipher the gruff bark of the Soldier and the frantic yapping of the Scout, their useless, empty threats.  If only his team’s Heavy had made it through this time, or even their Demo or Pyro, these bumbling idiots might have had a chance, but it was just these two.  
  
Always these two.  
  
Like actors following a not very original script, the scene played out the exact same way it had the last several (dozen, hundred, he can’t even remember how many) times.  The door opened briefly to let in a peek of light and a rush of warm air, but before he could speak, the Heavy had retrieved his sandwich and slammed the refrigerator shut again.  There was the slightly revolting noise of jaws working around layers of white bread and meat and cheese, and then the much more revolting noise as his two teammates proceeded to have their bodies brutalized by the fully healed enemy.  Every now and then the impact of a particularly violent blow would jostle the refrigerator door open and knock down a bottle of beer, giving him a quick glimpse of the horrific melee occurring outside.  
  
Not that he really wanted to see the Soldier or Scout being smashed apart and torn limb from limb, but sometimes they made funny faces in their death throes.  At least it was more entertaining than staring at the Medic’s collection of monstrous hearts all day long.  
  
The last high-pitched scream trailed off into a nauseating gurgle, the two would-be rescuers whisked back into Respawn, and inside the refrigerator, the Spy impatiently took another draw of his somehow still-lit cigarette, waiting for his own release.

* * *

  
  
Something was different this time.  This time the Heavy’s agonized roar joined the groans of the dying Soldier.  The refrigerator door suddenly whipped open and instead of the enemy’s beefy hand reaching in to grab the sandwich, his own Scout appeared in his line of vision.  
  
“Kill me,” he wheezed out of habit.  
  
“Not today, Frenchie.”  With a gap-toothed grin made noticeably gappier by a missing incisor, the Scout scooped him up, petri dish and battery and all.  “Today, you’re going home!”  
  
“Kill me?” he repeated, rolling his eyes towards the refrigerator with as much meaning as he could muster.  
  
“Wha-?  Oh yeah, thanks!”  The Scout hurriedly stuffed the leftover sandwich half into his mouth and raced off, leaping over the already fading lumps of flesh that used to be the Soldier and the Heavy.

* * *

  
  
  
With all of the trouble they apparently had getting to the common room of the RED base, he was not sure how the Scout expected to get out in one piece with a disembodied head slowing him down.  Not only that, but enough time had elapsed for some very angry REDs to have respawned.  A disheveled enemy Medic caught sight of them, his mouth opening for a furious shout, but whatever he meant to say got completely obliterated in the bomb blast that sprayed shrapnel and guts everywhere.  The Scout danced out of the way of the red-suited Pyro’s flamethrower before it got eliminated by a round of bullets pumping through its mushy flesh, but that only pushed him into the line of sight of the other team’s Sniper, who managed to blow out the Scout’s knee with a lucky shot.  A loud boom and ensuing scream signified their Sniper’s success in taking down his counterpart, but too late, for the damage was done.  
  
Time slowed to a crawl as the boy crashed to the ground, and the Spy bore witness to the following events with the extraordinary clarity of a man who thinks he is really about to die, probably, at least for a few minutes anyway.  
  
With a desperate last-ditch effort, the Scout threw him high into the air, and he and his cigarette and attached battery described a graceful arc above the heated chaos of the base.  Rather than feel any indignation at this treatment, all he could express was mild horror as his team’s Demoman held out his arms to catch him, a considerable distance away from where he was projected to land.  The mild horror quickly turned to ass-clenching terror (well, if he had any buttocks to clench) as the Pyro, seeing this same discrepancy, churned out an air blast in his direction to correct the trajectory, alas to no avail.  
  
“I gotcha, I gotcha!” the Demo shouted, against all physical evidence.  
  
“Murrdda hudda!”  
  
In the end, the Engineer was the one to catch him, darting out from behind the cover of the Sentry and diving forward several feet to save him from an unpleasant meeting with the earth.  He would have sobbed in relief but for the fact that his face was currently pressed into denim overalls.  
  
“Heads up, boys!” the Engineer bellowed, not realizing the humor in his choice of words as he turned and lobbed the head of his rescued teammate towards the BLU’s Heavy and Medic.  
  
The Spy had a brief respite to mutter, “ _Merde_ ,” and then the Heavy caught him, cradling him safely in bulky arms.  
  
But this harrowing game of catch was all worth it in the end, he thought, because in front of his eyes there appeared a vision of surpassing loveliness he had often dreamed of during the dark cold hours spent in the enemy team’s refrigerator.  
  
That is to say, the rest of his own body.  
  
Posed elegantly in a designer blue pinstripe suit, the impression of international suaveness was marred by the gouts of blood seeping profusely from the exposed neck and into the collar of the expensive dress shirt.  A dozen questions raced through his mind, the most pressing of which was the whereabouts of the nearest competent dry cleaners, because the last one he went to did not press his trousers to his liking, but he could not voice any of them before the Heavy plopped his head back onto his gory shoulders.  
  
“Now this might hurt a lot,” the Medic warned, his tone not particularly comforting.  
  
The Spy simply said, “Oh,” as the Medigun was levelled at him, the battery wire yanked free, and finally, finally, he lost consciousness.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How I felt BLU Spy's interactions with his team's Medic would go...

He woke up with a start, his heart thumping painfully fast, his throat dry and sore as if he had been screaming. Drawing in a ragged breath, he shut his eyes tight against a tremor of pain that burst against the base of his skull and raced down his vertebrae. His memory began to return in hazy, barely comprehensible fragments, but he remembered enough of the long imprisonment in the enemy’s refrigerator and the traumatic rescue up to the point he blacked out to decide that more screaming might be in order.

Mostly out of a long-engrained habit of self-preservation, he furtively glanced around the room through narrowed eyes, at the long blue shadows, the familiar wrench logo stenciled on sterile walls. His team must have taken him to the infirmary afterwards, tucking him into a bed while he was unconscious and apparently confiscating all of the weapons and gadgets they could find, which was not everything that could be found. He shuddered at the thought of his teammates rummaging through his clothes with their dirty, filthy paws, but those same teammates had saved him when it would have been easier to let him be. As much as he loathed to admit it, he owed them his life, his future, the continued use of his arms and legs...

“Herr Spy? How are you feeling?” the Medic asked, suddenly looming over him.

He barely managed to refrain from making good on that promised bout of screaming before realizing that this was his team’s Medic, and not the madman in RED who had imprisoned and tortured and humiliated him in various unspeakable and speakable manners. There was a difference, he reminded himself; there, in the worried crease between dark brows, the comforting hand resting lightly on his sweat-damp forehead.

Licking his chapped lips, the Spy croaked out, “I feel like hell.” He paused, grimacing, then added, “Is this the best you can do? I’m dying here.”

“Excellent, that is excellent news.” the Medic replied, withdrawing his hand and looking rather relieved for a physician whose healing abilities had just been insulted by an ungrateful patient.

“...Eh?” Not the most suave line of questioning the Spy had ever uttered, but it was all he could manage through the headache.

Always eager for a chance to explain to a captive audience things that no one really wanted explained, the Medic did not fail to deliver. “You see, the excruciating agony you are feeling means your brain has successfully reformed neural connections to the rest of your spine. At first I had feared there might be some initial tissue rejection, taking into account the length of time you spent with the opposing team, but happily for us, that was not the case.”

The Medic beamed at him, and while that smile could indeed be described as a maniacal grin of an extremely unhinged mind, it was also the smile of a man pleased to see a co-worker back after a long absence. At least, that was what the Spy chose to interpret it as, and was about to give his reluctant thanks when the Medic quickly shone a pen light into his eyes, causing him to blink and wince, and then pinched his nose, taking advantage of him opening his mouth to gasp in order to complete the crude examination.

“Hmm, everything seems to be in place. No permanent damage, nothing visible anyway...” He sounded a little disappointed and set an ominous looking instrument back down on the bedside cart alongside the other tools of his bloody trade. Only then did he remember that his patients generally liked to have all of their teeth and eyeballs in proper sockets. “Which is a good thing!”

“... _Merci, Docteur_ , for everything,” the Spy mumbled stuffily, trying to remember to be grateful.

“Ah, but I can not take all of the credit for putting you back together. We as a team decided to put you back into Respawn after the reattachment, and it took care of the rest.”

“Wait, you put me into Respawn... how?” He thought their Engineer had turned off friendly fire after that one disastrous incident in the Intel Room they were not to speak of again. Why, the only way his own team could “put him into respawn” is if they dragged him out to the battlefield and had RED team take potshots at his defenseless form...

“That is not important, how,” the Medic said as the Spy began to frown. “The important thing is that you are now in one piece and back where you belong. Here. With us.”

The Spy stared at him coldly.

Deciding it would be a good time to change the subject, the Medic reached over to adjust the settings on the Medigun, directing its warm healing ray back towards the Spy. “And very soon, my friend, you should be back on your feet, as good as new. Better than new! While you were indisposed, I took the opportunity to make a few improvements to your body, as I did for the rest of the team.”

In the friendly blue glow of the Medigun, the Spy tried to relax, although his heart began thrumming loudly, and a touch of dread, of excitement, sparked through his neurons like lightning. There was no way, it was just a coincidence...

As calmly as he could, he asked, “I don’t suppose this has anything to do with the Ubercharge mechanism you had been working on?”

The Medic chuckled, pleased to have his work acknowledged. “Working on? I have finally perfected it, Spy. And it was all thanks to you!”

“What?”

The Spy listened in fascinated horror as the Medic recounted the trouble he had in the quest for his ultimate weapon, how the opposing team’s Medic apparently overcame the obstacles he encountered, much to the devastation of the BLU team, and how one fateful glance at the Spy’s decapitated body while it was rooting around in the infirmary refrigerator inspired a brilliant solution he promptly put to use. More disturbing than the fact that the doctor experimented on him without his consent, which was actually on par for the Medic, was the convenience of it all. How common were mega baboon hearts in the first place? It felt wrong, too neat... Too suspicious, and that was speaking from experience as a connoisseur of suspect activities...

By the time the Medic finished speaking and waving about his research notes like a madman, the Spy had formulated several theories, cross-referenced them with his intimate knowledge of BLU Industries, discarded some of the more wild ideas, modified the most likely theories with the bits and scraps of stolen RED intelligence he had managed to decode, then finally, he concluded, without a doubt, that he needed a cigarette very badly.

“Where did you put my cigarette case?”

The Medic paused, looking affronted. “I would be insane to let you smoke in your current state.”

It was difficult to not roll his eyes. “One cigarette, please, and a glass of water, that is all I ask.”

“Soup for now, porridge for supper, solid foods starting tomorrow,” the Medic retorted, snapping the over-stuffed folder shut in a gesture of finality.

“You monster, even RED Medic allowed me a cigarette. Me, his prisoner!”

“Because he obviously cared nothing for your well-being!”

“And you do?! You experimented on me without my consent!”

“I’ll have you know that your body did, in fact, consent!” The Medic brandished a sheet of paper written in tiny font in typical American legalese, no doubt brokered by their Soldier, and there was no mistake, that was “BLU Spy” in his handwriting on the bottom line. Albeit crooked to the point of veering off the bottom of the page.

He could have kicked his own body. Except that would be impossible. But he would have tried.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The team's welcome home... If you remember this fic from tf2chan, there is indeed a continuation, however, since I was not able to finish the rest of the story, I will not add it here. Thanks for reading.

The door to the infirmary creaked open, and the Heavy poked his head in.

“Is little Spy awake? Can we come in?” he whispered loudly, while the very much awake Spy rolled his eyes.

“Yes, you may stay and visit for a few minutes, as long as Scout remains quiet…”

The rest of the Medic’s warning got cut off by a whoop of joy from aforementioned teammate and cheers from the rest of the men. They rushed into the room and surrounded the Spy’s bed, shouting statements to the effect of “Congratulations on your reattachment!” and “If you get beheaded and kidnapped by the enemy team ever again, heaven help me, I swear I will kill you myself until you die and that may take a very, very long time.” The entire team, even the ones who didn’t like him much, which was pretty much the entire team, was laughing and patting his head as if making sure it was the real thing and not, perhaps, the RED Spy’s head, and much to his embarrassment, the Spy felt himself flushing hot at this unusual display of affection. Before too long, the Heavy caught them all up into a massive bone-crushing hug. At the Heavy’s urging, the Medic sighed and eventually squeezed his way into the group hug as well.

After enough time elapsed so that the hug transformed from something comradely into something awkward, the Spy cleared his throat and asked, “Whose gun is poking into my leg?”

Everyone shrugged and attempted to pat themselves down in the constricted environment, but it seemed no one was armed, and there was much confusion until the Medic cried out “Archimedes!” and pulled out a bedraggled dove that had somehow made its way into the middle of the group.

“He thinks he’s human,” the Medic said to no one in particular.

The Spy declined to comment, he was still feeling something pressed against his thigh, and it had an almost human insistence that was not typical of guns or doves, at least, not to his knowledge as both an assassin and a former inhabitant of the French countryside. But after weeks of his head living in isolation inside a refrigerator, it felt actually nice to have the Pyro snuffling into his armpit, the Soldier breathing down his neck, the Heavy scratching his scalp in that ticklish way, so heart-warming to have everyone acknowledging him for once instead of always pretending they didn’t see him so that the enemy would have no clue he was sneaking into their territory. He did not know if he’d ever get the chance again, so he could overlook the awkwardness, for thirty more seconds anyway.

The team gradually disentangled themselves, and the Scout eagerly pulled out a get well card that he and the Soldier had composed to hand to the Spy.

“Oh, you rhymed faggot with maggot, how err, charming.”

The card included an insert, an overdramatized ballad version of his rescue penned by the Demo in a particularly vicious drunken haze, with an accompanying illustration drawn in crayon courtesy of the Pyro. The Engineer’s handiness apparently knew no bounds, and he surprised the Spy with a bouquet of lilies, white with a rust red pattern that almost certainly was dried blood. To top everything off, the Sniper produced a blue and gold hand-knitted scarf which he tied about the Spy’s neck, perhaps a little too tightly for comfort, “so as to keep yer head from falling off again.” Something niggled at him, the fineness of the scarf, the eeriness of the lilies, the larger-than-life quality of the ballad, as if they had been expecting for him to not make it through the regraft and had hastily converted items intended for his grave into get-well gifts, but he did not want to seem too suspicious too soon.

“Thank you, everyone,” the Spy said, once he loosened the scarf enough to breathe, “for not forgetting about me.”

Some of his teammates coughed and looked to the side, telltale signs that they had indeed forgotten about him, but the Soldier quickly assured him that despite his general cowardly uselessness on the battlefield, it turned out they really needed his skills after all, and not just because they were one man down and the other team felt no qualms about using their fully-headed Spy as much as possible.

“It took weeks of reconnaissance and strategizing to get you back, I myself died 254 times in at least thirty different grisly ways, but I would have died 254 more times if that’s what it took. No one gets left behind. No one.”

“No kidding, you woulda done the same if it was one of us!”

“Got to say, missed having you around, Spook.”

“Murff muhhm mumm muh muh mrmf!”

“You got a good head on your shoulders, let’s keep it that way.”

“Rest up, laddie, we’ll be seeing you on the field soon!”

“Everyone, out. Now.”

Then it was over. Just like that, the Spy was alone again in the infirmary, in the cold and the dark, but not feeling alone, nor cold, nor dark. The spying and investigating could wait, he thought, now he just needed to sleep. He tucked the scarf into a more fashionable knot and laid back down again, his no longer human heart full and warmed.


End file.
